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Pieter writes in again from across the pond (Arcana, in the Netherlands) with a new knife he made!

The knife was a request: ”Hi, I have done all kinds of tests in the past few weeks, because I think it would be nice if there was some blood at rituals and now I have had a good idea so that I can make a cut with blood at every ritual that I find necessary, but I miss some details on how I can do that. My basic idea is a hollow handle where I can connect a tube of fake blood too and that if I squeeze something in the handle, for example, some blood will run out of the tip of the knife. A tube runs through the blade. Something like that. Is such a thing possible?”

Some technical details: the knife is 40 cm long, about 15 inches. the handle unscrews and folds open so you can easily exchange the silicone flask. squeezing the flask forces the “blood” through the hollow core and out of some small channels drilled into core right through the foam.

Sometimes when someone gets a crazy idea, Pieter at Arcana builds it for them.

At the Arcana LARP, magic gets quite technical. They use fireworks and black powder mixed with milk powder or sugar to physrep spells. The combustible powder is packed in small tubes. This way, a fire spell really shoots fire, and an Ice spell spews a white puff of smoke.

Here’s a magic staff that Pieter made in the shape of a dragon with batteries, a switch, and a male din plug to ignite the spell! The eyes light up when you push the trigger.

New and improved, what every modern druid must have! With its length of 6 feet or two big steps it will hold your enemies at bay.

Impress your followers with light up stems and sickle. Put fear in the hearts of your enemies with a dazzling light display. And with the handy flashlight feature, find the most elusive of herbs in the densest of forests.

Pieter’s technical notes:

I have used some 3mm ultra bright clear led’s (red, blue, green and white)

Red, blue and green are used in the inside of the sickle. Green is also used in the stem of each leaf and whites are use in the bottom of the staff and serve a flash light function. All the led’s are controlled by some micro switches housed in a wooden handle. This handle also holds 3 triple A batteries the power source for the led’s. The stems and the in side of the sickle are made of clear pvc tubing usually use in aquaria. This tubing is made more stiff an less clear by filling it with hot glue.

Led’s are inserted in the bottom of the stems and in the side of the sickle by drilling a small holes. For protecting the led’s in the sickle and because this type of pvc doesn’t take glue very well. I covered the pvc tubing on one side with cloth. With is glued and stitched to the tubing and this provides a good base for sticking the foam on.

Pieter from Arcana is back at it again: these swords were shaped using a belt sander with 80 grit. He notes that this left the surface to coarse and looking a bit pitted. Higher grit sandpaper might leave the surface smoother, and heat treating the foam could potentially get rid of the last bumps, but Pieter hasn’t tested that theory yet.

The swords are first painted with black latex and then sealed using plastidip. After this sealing, the swords were primed for any available kind of paint. In this case Pieter airbrushed heavily diluted silver and bronze metallic model paint. Then the swords were sealed again with plastidip.

Pieter from Arcana in the Netherlands presents his luminescent arrows. Since Arcana sometimes hosts for 48 hours straight, there’s combat at night and arrows can get lost. It’s much easier to find these arrows on the ground, because they have light-up nocks.

The light in the arrow is courtesy of a light-up-nock, commercially available, luckily not too expensive ($2 – $5). There’s a very simple LED and battery configuration in a clear plastic nock. There are several types of light-up-nocks most of them are usually bow string operated. The one thing you should pay special attention to is size, most light-up-nocks are 6.2 mm in diameter and arrows come in different cross-sections. Luckily most arrow shafts that have a insert to accommodate the changing of the arrow head are of this size.

The arrow head, is a commercial available prefab foam arrowhead for archery tag ($3 – $5). It screws in the arrow shaft via the insert. And can be made extra safe with some glue. The arrow is a carbon fiber 31 inch compound hunting bow arrow and comes complete with a changeable arrow head and real feathers($2 – $3).

The build is very simple, replace the arrowhead and replace the nock. The one thing that isn’t in the picture that I have bound the feathers with a string (white) so it looks just a bit better.

One arrow costs Pieter something between $7 – $13 and looks a lot better than the commercial rubber feathered larp arrows that will cost something like $16.

It’s a little different than the heavy boffer focus we normally have here at foamsmithing.com, but this should be of interest to anyone seeking a Star Wars game or cosplay. Also suitable for magical glowing blades for fantasy, steampunk, and other settings!

“Okay – about a year ago, my friend who plays as Darius, with whom I started in this game about 20 years ago, sat next to me and started a conversation.

He thought that he should make a bigger club and that he should favor a shield but… It wasn’t in his skill set to make one as good as he would like.

And he that it was sad that his character would not look as nice as Darius deserved . So I caved in and said I would build him something, but what should it look like?

So he asked for a wooden shield like the one Thorin Oakenshield uses in The Hobbit.

This year I also decided to try my hand at Airbrushing Latex. (Which I might add works very well.) To make a practice piece, and to trick my friend, I made a practice piece of exactly what he didn’t ask for.

And this is what came out: a tree trunk cut, single origin, round punch shield. When we assembled for that game I presented this shield to him and to my big surprise he absolutely liked it!

Luckily for me when I gave him the shield that was intended for him loved It. Also, the club is his.